Friday, September 24, 2010

Davids Daily Dose - Friday September 24th





1/  Paul Krugman on the Republican's "Pledge to America".....he makes the point that even while putting out this document as the platform for the Republican Party the politicians responsible for implementing it know that it's bullshit. This may be a new low in cynicism in our politics......

As he points out, the only way to balance the budget by 2020, while simultaneously (a) making the Bush tax cuts permanent and (b) protecting all the programs Republicans say they won’t cut, is to completely abolish the rest of the federal government: “No more national parks, no more Small Business Administration loans, no more export subsidies, no more N.I.H. No more Medicaid (one-third of its budget pays for long-term care for our parents and others with disabilities). No more child health or child nutrition programs. No more highway construction. No more homeland security. Oh, and no more Congress.”
The “pledge,” then, is nonsense. But isn’t that true of all political platforms? The answer is, not to anything like the same extent. Many independent analysts believe that the Obama administration’s long-run budget projections are somewhat too optimistic — but, if so, it’s a matter of technical details. Neither President Obama nor any other leading Democrat, as far as I can recall, has ever claimed that up is down, that you can sharply reduce revenue, protect all the programs voters like, and still balance the budget.
And the G.O.P. itself used to make more sense than it does now. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=1











2/  On the same topic, the "Pledge to America", Jon Stewart has one of his better segments....very funny, on point.....if you watch it, remember your sister.......4 minutes.....













3/  We need our values back as a country - not the "family values" of the religious loonies but real, actual values. Like honour. Accepting responsibility. Being told, and dealing with, the truth, among others. 
David Brooks [the conservative columnist] with a challenging column......for those of you with some brain cells left......

Somewhere in the country, though, there is a politician who is going to try to lead us out of this logjam. Whoever that person is, I hope he or she is listening carefully to what the public is saying. Because when you listen carefully, you notice the public anger doesn’t quite match the political class anger. The political class is angry about ideological things: bloated government or the predatory rich. The public seems to be angry about values.
The heart of any moral system is the connection between action and consequences. Today’s public anger rises from the belief that this connection has been severed in one realm after another.
Financiers send the world into recession and don’t seem to suffer. Neighbors take on huge mortgages and then just walk away when they go underwater. Washington politicians avoid living within their means. Federal agencies fail and get rewarded with more responsibilities.
What the country is really looking for is a restoration of responsibility. If some smart leader is going to help us get out of ideological gridlock, that leader will reframe politics around this end.











4/  Bill Maher has some great TV shows, and some stinkers as well.....but his written articles [mostly funny] are often excellent....like this article on the whining rich......waaaa.....my taxes....my taxes.....waaaa.......

New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being "rich", or what tax rate is "too much." But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole.
And let's be clear: that's 3.6% only on income above 250 grand -- your first 250, that's still on the house. 










5/  Ladies - have a fat problem? Want to look better? 
Onion News has the answers for you in a fascinating interview with an expert on how to disguise those excess inches..........













6/  Florida - #1 in the nation.....yeahhhhhh......we're No.#1......oh what's that? No. #1 in mortgage fraud? Oh shit.....

Mortgage fraud is responsible for untold trillions of dollars in bad loans currently defaulting across the country, and Florida has played a starring role in the tragedy, a federal commission said during a hearing in Miami on Tuesday.
A panel of national and local experts sat before the federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission during a hearing focused on liar's loans, predatory mortgage practices and shady home appraisals. They concluded that the financial impact of the fraud was more severe than most have estimated, and prosecuting those responsible will be nearly impossible.













7/   Video about a guy in Mexico who has built a floating island out of plastic bottles....and lives on it......very strange.....he even grows his own crops on this island......4 minutes....hmmm...wonder if he grows his own weed.....












8/  Is this what YOU think? 

"Coral reefs all over the world are dying due to climate change and the warming of the oceans....but I'm over 50 - so I don't give a shit.....there will be at least some fish for the next 25 years......so climate change won't really affect me....."

The problem is there are significant numbers of people in this country over 50 who really don't care, I repeat .....just ......don't....... care...... that the planet is heating up to the point that life in the next 20 years into the future will be seriously affected....badly. And these irresponsible and selfish pigs are the ones on the levers of power, the oligarchs that run our major corporations who think it might affect next quarters earnings to do the right things to at least slow the warming down.....screw the grandchildren, let them take care of themselves.....

Where are the young people in their 30's and 40's whose lives will be significantly degraded? Asleep? Or just stupid.....or watching Fox News.....

Oh well......sometimes you just say - see paragraph one.....

From Thailand to Texas, corals are reacting to the heat stress by bleaching, or shedding their color and going into survival mode. Many have already died, and more are expected to do so in coming months. Computer forecasts of water temperature suggest that corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks.
What is unfolding this year is only the second known global bleaching of coral reefs. Scientists are holding out hope that this year will not be as bad, over all, as 1998, the hottest year in the historical record, when an estimated 16 percent of the world’s shallow-water reefs died. But in some places, including Thailand, the situation is looking worse than in 1998.
Scientists say the trouble with the reefs is linked toclimate change. For years they have warned that corals, highly sensitive to excess heat, would serve as an early indicator of the ecological distress on the planet caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases.













9/  Another Florida's No. #1 story - I wonder if our Legislature is homophobic, as Florida has [or had] the most anti-gay adoption laws in the country.

You know what they say - scratch a homophobe, and there's a guy inside yearning to tap his foot in an airport mens room......come out of the closet boys, it's 2010......

Judge Cope wrote that at the trial, the state presented only two expert witnesses, one of whom undercut the state’s case by disagreeing with the idea of a blanket ban on gay adoption, stating instead that adoptions should be considered case by case. The other expert called by the state, Dr. George A. Rekers, was criticized by opposing experts as having provided research that was rife with “errors in scientific methodology and reporting” and that “did not meet established standards in the field.”
The court did not comment on the fact that Dr. Rekers, who was paid $120,000 for his work in the case, has since been enmeshed in a scandal after he was discovered to have taken a 10-day trip to Europe with a young man who advertised sexual services on a site for gay escorts.
According to the lower court decision cited in the opinion on Wednesday, “Florida is the only remaining state to expressly ban all gay adoptions without exception.”













10/  Think flying sucks? Have a look at the new airline "seat" they are trying to get approved! OMG.....look at the picture and imagine yourself in cattle class....Spirit and Ryanair here we come......

Aviointeriors said the seat allowed for a new basic class of seating with a “much reduced seat pitch.” Most coach seats have 31 or 32 inches of pitch, the industry definition of the distance between one point in a seat and the same point in the seat ahead. A few discount airlines have seats with 28 inches of pitch, but the SkyRider is intended to have 23 inches or less, depending on how an airline installs it.











11/  Movie and TV reviews

Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps, directed by Oliver Stone. Great review, worth seeing.......

The full title of Oliver Stone’s hectic new chapter in the Gordon Gekko cycle — a conventional sequel that is also a corrective, a parody and a sly act of auto-homage — is “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” and the movie has an insomniac restlessness that is by turns thrilling and enervating. It is as volatile as the Dow Jones on a day of seesaw, high-volume trading, as Mr. Stone and the screenwriters (Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff) scramble to capture the cacophonous cultural rhythms of right now, not so long ago and some vaguely recollected bygone age when things were differe



The Social Network, directed by David Fincher....quite a good review, a fascinating look at a new media tycoon.....

What makes Mark Zuckerberg run? In “The Social Network,”David Fincher’s fleet, weirdly funny, exhilarating, alarming and fictionalized look at the man behind the social-media phenomenon Facebook — 500 million active users, oops, friends, and counting — Mark runs and he runs, sometimes in flip-flops and a hoodie, across Harvard Yard and straight at his first billion. Quick as a rabbit, sly as a fox, he is the geek who would be king or just Bill Gates. He’s also the smartest guy in the room, and don’t you forget it.





TV - new tonight
Blue Bloods -  CBS Fridays at 10pm with Tom Selleck....decent review, good to see Tom Selleck back....


“Blue Bloods,” though, addresses other issues, police brutality among them, more cogently. And it offers a potentially compelling narrative arc in the story line of the family’s youngest son, Jamie (Will Estes), who is asked to go undercover unbeknown to his father to investigate malfeasance in the department. Forget the Irish. “Blue Bloods” dangles before us the possibility that it might go mythically Greek.
















Todays older mother joke


With all the new technology regarding fertility recently discovered, a 65-year-old friend of mine was able to give birth. When she was discharged from the hospital and went home, I went to visit..

'May I see the new baby?' I asked

'Not yet,' She said 'I'll make coffee and we can visit for a while first.'

Thirty minutes had passed, and I asked, 'May I see the new baby now?'

'No, not yet,' She said.

After another few minutes had elapsed,

I asked again, 'May I see the baby now?' 

'No, not yet,' replied my friend.

Growing very impatient, I asked, 'Well, when can I see the baby?'

'WHEN HE CRIES!'  she told me.

'WHEN HE CRIES?'  I demanded.  'Why do I have to wait until he CRIES?' 
 
'BECAUSE I FORGOT WHERE I PUT HIM, O.K.?!!'
 
 
 








Todays haunting jokes

QUESTIONS THAT HAUNT ME!
Can you cry under water?
How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
Why do you have to "put your two cents in"... but it's only a "penny for your thoughts"?  Where's that extra penny going to?
Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?
Why does a round pizza come in a square box ?
What disease did cured ham actually have?
How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby " when babies wake up like every two hours
If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?
Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?
Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?
Why do doctors leave the room while you change?
They're going to see you naked anyway.
Why is "bra" singular and "panties" plural?
Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat ?
If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a stupid song about him?
Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane ?
If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?
Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours?
They're both dogs!
If Wile E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that ACME stuff, why didn't he just buy dinner?

If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?
Why did you just try singing the two songs above?
  Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your butt?
Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him for a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?
Do you ever wonder why you gave me your e-mail address in the first place?












Todays blonde joke

Two bowling teams, one of all Blondes and one of all Brunettes, charter a double-Decker bus for a weekend trip to Louisiana . The Brunette team rode on the bottom of the bus, and the Blonde team rode on the top level.

The Brunette team down below really whooped it up, having a great time, when one of them realized she hadn't heard anything from the Blondes upstairs. She decided to go up and investigate.

When the Brunette reached the top, she found all the Blondes in fear, staring straight ahead at the road, clutching the seats in front of them with white knuckles. the brunette asked, "What the heck's going on up here? We're having a great time downstairs!"

One of the Blondes looked up at her, swallowed hard and whispered... "
YEAH, BUT YOU'VE GOT A DRIVER!?!"


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Wednesday, September 22, 2010



1/  China and how the Chinese see us
Very good Thomas Friedman column.....a fair and balanced view of the Chinese economy.....and ours.....just makes you sick of our "leaders"......

There is absolutely no reason our democracy should not be able to generate the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things — democratically — that China does autocratically. We’ve done it before. But we’re not doing it now because too many of our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class are more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country.













2/  The Koch brothers again - and how they are other oil companies are pouring money into repealing California's clean energy bill.....they really are evil......a NYTimes editorial....
Four years ago, bipartisan majorities in the California Legislature approved a landmark clean energy bill that many hoped would serve as a template for a national effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil and mitigate the threat of climate change. 
Now a well-financed coalition of right-wing ideologues, out-of-state oil and gas companies and climate-change skeptics is seeking to effectively kill that law with an initiative on the November state ballot. The money men include Charles and David Koch, the Kansas oil and gas billionaires who have played a prominent role in financing the Tea Party movement.











3/  Salmonella infected eggs 
According to this story the DeCoster Farms have been poisoning people for 30 years, from when he started in Maine......their safety records have been awful....just on a side note Austin DeCoster is a major donor to Iowa Republicans and the Republican party....what a surprise.....

Farms tied to Mr. DeCoster were a primary source of Salmonella enteritidis in the United States in the 1980s, when some of the first major outbreaks of human illness from the bacteria in eggs occurred, according to health officials and public records. At one point, New York and Maryland regulators believed DeCoster eggs were such a threat that they banned sales of the eggs in their states.












4/  More on Food
Did you know 75% of the packaged foods in the supermarket are genetically modified? And GM foods aren't good for you.....this article is a start to educate yourself. If you want to eat properly and protect yourself click on some of the links in the article.....
There are eight GM food crops. The five major varieties—soy, corn, canola, cotton, and sugar beets—have bacterial genes inserted, which allow the plants to survive an otherwise deadly dose of weed killer. Farmers use considerably more herbicides on these GM crops and so the food has higher herbicide residues. About 68% of GM crops are herbicide tolerant.
The second GM trait is a built-in pesticide, found in GM corn and cotton. A gene from the soil bacterium called Bt (for Bacillus thuringiensis) is inserted into the plant’s DNA, where it secretes the insect-killing Bt-toxin in every cell. About 19% of GM crops produce their own pesticide. Another 13% produce a pesticide and are herbicide tolerant.
There is also Hawaiian papaya and a small amount of zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, which are engineered to resist a plant virus.

But wait - the FDA, you say, has approved these foods. Yes it has, but the approval was done with political pressure from the big food corporations....see below. Just make a note - GM crops are NOT allowed in Europe......but big Agra isn't as powerful in the EU as it is here.....again folks, the oligarchy using it's clout and money.....
But internal memos made public by a lawsuit2 reveal that their position was staged by political appointees who were under orders from the White House to promote GMOs. In addition, the FDA official in charge of creating this policy was Michael Taylor, the former attorney for Monsanto, the largest biotech company, and later their vice president.
In reality, FDA scientists had repeatedly warned that GM foods can create unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects, including allergies, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged long-term safety studies, but were ignored. 













5/  Good Jon Stewart segment, his topic de jour is the Tea Party.....funny.....4 minutes.....













6/  Dollar Stores
One of the bright points in an otherwise dismal retail outlook are the dollar stores, as people are buying very small quantities of staples.....even WalMart is packaging smaller....hmmm....wonder how the middle class is doing in this economy.....

Some customers at Wal-Mart and the major dollar chains — Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree — have such modest budgets that the retailers report upticks in spending at the beginning of the month, when government benefit checks and many paychecks come through. Late in the month, sales drop as even multiroll packs of paper towels are ditched for a single roll.
“People are literally running out of cash on hand as the month goes on and they’re looking for smaller package sizes,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail consulting and research firm Customer Growth Partners. “They may have $10, $20, $30 to spend getting toward the end of the month, and they have to be able to still feed the family and get diapers and so forth.”












7/  Political redistricting - Amendments 5 and 6
Both parties are guilty - whoever is in power draws safe districts for their party every 10 years and this leads to the polarisation of our politics - if a politician is in a safe district, they can pander to extremists.....
Vote YES on Amendments 5 and 6.....

That's where Amendments 5 and 6 on the November 2 ballot come in. If approved (by 60 percent of Florida voters), these constitutional amendments would try to correct a fundamental cause of voter discontent and apathy: Their inability to choose members of the state Legislature and the U.S. House who live in their community and represent their values, hopes and aspirations. Too often, the names on the ballot reflect the aspirations and political agenda of the party in power that drew -- and usually gerrymandered -- the legislative and congressional district lines. Under our current system, the politicians choose the voters, not the other way around. This must change.














8/  Hasn't been a decent boxing movie for a long time, so "The Fighter" with Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and Amy Adams looks good, much more real and intense than "Rocky"....2 minute trailer.....













9/  Septic tanks in Florida
This is a pretty good illustration of how difficult it is to get even sensible things done in this State, governed by idiots pandering to the Tea Partiers. This story is about a bill that mandates inspections of septic tanks every five years, and as the present and past owner of houses with septic tanks this is a damn good idea....poop builds up over five years to an unspeakable mess....but no - it's 'big government" interference.....

"I just simply think that to mandate every five years for every homeowner with a septic tank to have it inspected is unnecessary and big government," Coley said. She introduced a bill to repeal the mandate during the July special session on oil drilling  but the Legislature adjourned without voting on any legislation.
So screw our water supply.......
The bill was promoted as a measure to protect Florida's springs, which have become choked with weeds and algae as nitrogen in groundwater from a variety of sources has increased. DOH and the septic tank industry say septic tanks should be inspected and pumped out every three to five years to keep them functioning properly. Florida has 2.6 million septic tanks, according to a DOH study completed May 1.












10/  TV tonight

The Defenders with Jim Belushi  - Wednesday at 10pm on CBS....sounds good

Questions of innocence are established fairly early in the far more appealing of the legal dramas beginning on Wednesday: “The Defenders” on CBS. Here the love connection is unambiguously platonic and winning, centered on two defense lawyers in partnership: one, Pete Kaczmarek, played by the boyishly louche Jerry O’Connell; and the other, Nick Morelli, delivered in the form of the saggily avuncular Jim Belushi. 

The Whole Truth - Wednesday at 10 on ABC.....not so good

“The Whole Truth” presents itself as structurally innovative, speed-racing between the case-building efforts of the prosecution and the defense. Each warrior is given equal time and the evidence is piled up on both sides to maximize the suspense around the weekly suspect’s guilt or innocence. But the personality cost is too high for the payoff.




Better With You - ABC at 8.30 on Wednesday.....ehhh.....
But the single-family multigeneration setup seems to have facilitated an undertone of nastiness and desperation in the humor, most clearly expressed in the condescending portrayal of the youngest couple. Casey, especially, with his Barney Fife-style guilelessness, is a character that doesn’t exist in the real world, a holy fool for the digital age.




Undercovers, NBC at 8pm Wednesdays.....oops.....
The banter between the Blooms is so full of cloying sugar substitutes and so devoid of any real tension that there is no voyeuristic thrill to be had even from their — I’m just going to say it, because the show does — “sexpionage.” The gazes they exchange are part soft pornography, part Lifetime television. Someone just give these people a cooking show.











11/  Music Video
Mayer Hawthorne - I've heard some whining about how all of my videos are rock or pop - so here's one for the more "discriminating" viewer - this guy sounds like Smokey Robinson.....enjoy.....3 minutes.....











Todays video - "Toyota".....see how much both of them want the new car....funny.....











Todays philosophical joke


Ten Thoughts to Ponder

 Number 10 - Life is sexually transmitted. 
 Number 9 - Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
 

 Number 8 - Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich .
 

 Number 7 - Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

Number 6 - Some people are like a Slinky-not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
 

 Number 5 - Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals, dying of nothing.
 

 Number 4 - All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
 

 Number 3 - Why does a slight tax increase cost you $800.00, and a substantial tax cut saves you $30.00?
 

 Number 2 - In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
 

 And The Number 1 Thought - Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers--what you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
 

 - - - and as someone recently said to me: "Don't worry about old age--it doesn't last long."











Todays blonde joke

Blonde Cop

Top Dumb Blonde Jokes
This blonde cop stops a blonde driver and asks for identification.
The blonde driver looks all around in her purse and can’t find her license. “I must have left it at home, officer.”
“Well, do you have any kind of identification on you?” asks the cop.
The blonde takes out a pocket mirror and says, “I do have this picture of me.”
“Let me see it,” says the cop. She holds up the mirror and looks in it. Then she says, “Sorry. If I had known you were a police officer, I wouldn’t have stopped you.”













Todays retirement joke

Where to Retire?

 
You can retire to  Phoenix , Arizona where 
1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away because you found shade. 2. You've experienced condensation on your butt from the hot water in the toilet bowl. 3. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town. 4. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food. 5. You know that "dry heat" is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door. 6. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!



You can retire to  California where
1. You make over $250,000 and you still can't afford to buy a house.
2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
3. You know how to eat an artichoke.
4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.
5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and Drought. 


You can retire to  New York City where
1. You say "the city" and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan . 2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can't find Wisconsin on a map. 3. You think Central Park is "nature." 4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual. 5. You've worn out a car horn. (ed note: if you have a car) 6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression. 


You can retire to Buffalo, NY where 1.. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco . 2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas. 3. You have more than one recipe for deer. 4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons. 5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction. 



You can retire to the  South where 1.. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store. 2. "Y'all" is singular and "all y'all" is plural. 3. "He needed killin'" is a valid defense. 
4. Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob , Jimmy Bob , Mary Sue, Betty Jean, Mary Beth , etc. 5. Everything is either "in yonder," "over yonder" or "out yonder." It's important to know the difference, too.


 You can retire to  Colorado where 1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car 2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and so he stops at the day care center. 3. A pass does not involve a football or dating. 4... The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail. 


You can retire to the Midwest where 1. You've never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name. 2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor. 3. You have had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" on the same day. 4. You end sentences with a preposition: "Where's my coat at?" 5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, "It was different!" 


 AND You can retire to Florida where 1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon... 
2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind -- even houses and cars. 
3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist. 
4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state. 
5. Cars in front of you often appear to be driven by headless p eople.
 



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